Collection of Shorts: Mass Effect
by Renegone
Summary: I do lots of random drabbles and scenes in between working on longer fics. Normally I post them to tumblr but then it occurred to me I could post them all here in one great big collection of shorts. Then I thought how funny "Collection of Shorts" sounded and how Kasumi would be rifling through them in search of the satin ones. Then I pictured Kaidan in satin shorts. Mmmm.
1. On Your Way

He thought it cruel that there was no weather on Arcturus, because the day they said their last goodbyes to Commander Shepard ought to have been a rainy day. It ought to have poured, heavy and thick, the skies dark and foreboding the way the future now looked without her. It ought to have been storming, and irrationally he felt himself hating Arcturus for not providing the proper backdrop for his grieving.

His jaw clenched, fists tightly balled at his sides as the half circle gathered around the memorial wall, smooth and dark and heavy the way he wished the sky was, but much too final, too cold, to represent the woman whose name was etched there in sharp relief. How cruel that the woman herself, all warm flesh and teasing grins, must be represented now by the sharp lines of a serif font carved into stone. Her name was exactly the same as every other listed on the long black wall and he felt another stab of fury at whoever had thought this was a fitting way to remember her.

Anderson was still speaking. He seemed like he had experience at this sort of thing. His voice barely even wavered as he talked about soldiers and heroes and the ones that we lose. He hadn't wanted to do the talking, but Kaidan was glad that he had asked him.

"She would want you to," he'd said, unable to meet the Captain's gaze.

To say what Shepard 'would have done' or 'had done' felt like the cruelest thing in the world, because she wasn't here anymore to do them.

The captain looked his way and he unclenched his fists, feeling numb but prepared for what was to come next. He stepped up, but stiffened when the younger man at the other end of the half circle also moved. Kaidan set his jaw, took another step, and moved to the side of the funeral airlock in the wall that was between them and the great beyond of space.

It was tradition. If an Alliance serviceman died on board a vessel there was a hierarchy deciding just who was responsible for sending their body to be one with space in ceremony. With Pressly gone, Shepard gone, and him occupying the place of next-of-kin, the pilot stepped in. He could have kicked up more of a ruckus. He could have demanded the pilot be refused, but part of him thought the little shit could use a reminder of what they had all lost.

He tried to keep his face neutral as he and Joker moved in unison toward the polished metal door that would separate them from their commander forever. The younger man glanced up at him, perhaps hopefully, perhaps for guidance, but Kaidan's dark eyes stayed focused on his task, lest he find himself sneering. The least the little shit could have done was taken off that ridiculous hat for the funeral. The pilot shrank, his expression darkening as he and the Normandy's former marine detachment leader worked together to close the polished metal door and turn the manual lock to pressurize the chamber.

They stepped back into their places in the circle. His fists clenched harder now, knuckles white, as he knew the end of it was coming. Anderson was saying something, but he couldn't hear it over the struggle he was having to keep his breathing even, to keep from choking up right here in front of everyone. Out of grief? Out of rage. He couldn't even tell. He might well have lost it, if he hadn't felt a gentle touch wrap two hands around his shaking fist, and Liara rest her cheek against the shoulder of his suit.

"How can it feel so final?" she whispered. "When it's not even really her?"

There was no body in the airlock as the hydraulics engaged to shunt the contents out into space. They had nothing to recover, so they were shooting off a set of her old dog tags, and as the hiss of the chamber's pressure chambered echoed, the dog tags careened slowly out into the black of space.

His breath whooshed out of him and he stepped away from Liara's grip. Whether he ran or walked to the nearest window he didn't know. The tall, floor to ceiling windows gave a clear view of her name slipping away from them, nothing to be done, no way to get her back from the speckled blackness beyond. It wasn't fair. A heavy breath broke through the ironclad grip he had been keeping on it. He placed his hand against the chilled glass of the window, willing the dogtags back to him, willing their wearer back to him, but no amount of wishing would change their inevitable, slow progress away from him.

_It wasn't me. Why wasn't it me?_

He took a shuddering breath as he felt someone step up to his right, composing himself, reigning himself in. He glanced over to see the familiar brown eyes beside him that watched the dog tags drifting away. He sniffed, took his arm down from the window. He shouldn't claim the space this way, as though he was the only one who could grieve her. He was just the only one who had more of her to grieve than anyone else – unless there was something she and Ashley hadn't been telling him.

"What do you think she was thinking?" he asked, just to have something to say, just because it was on his mind. The dog tags were drifting through space, just as Shepard's body had, and it was slow – so dreadfully slow. God, he hoped like hell she wasn't conscious for reentry.

Ashley thought for a moment, watching the Shepard's tags floating in serene movement away from the space station, and then she shrugged.

"Hell, she was probably thinking," she lifted her arms out to either side of herself in uncanny mimic of Shepard's swagger, "'Ha! First again, assholes.'"

In spite of himself, Kaidan snorted, and then when that was done he snickered again, until the laughter just wouldn't stop coming. One minute he was sane – the next, he and Ashley were cackling their fool heads off like they were in a comedy house instead of a funeral. He had never heard Ashley laugh like that, a laugh that was all through her nose and completely involuntary. The sound of it made him laugh even harder. It took minutes, full minutes of laughing so hard tears sprang to his eyes, for him to realize the tears weren't necessarily ones of laughter, and the laughs were sharp enough to constitute sobs.

He swore. Ashley laid a hand on his arm, and before he knew quite what he was doing, he was holding onto her tight, tighter than he should have been with his strength and his biotics. He might've felt bad if she wasn't holding on just as tight.

The show of solidarity was brief even so, and he sniffed savagely as he pulled away. He wasn't losing control like this – not here – not with all these people around.

"Hang in there, LT."

"Thanks, Chief."

He looked back out into space, taking and releasing a deep breath. The dog tags were far away now, so far away that he could barely make them out. He watched them in silence, pretending stoicism, pretending that his breath didn't come faster and harder when he could no longer tell whether he was looking at a star or the dog tags until they moved a hair and then he could spot them once more. Until he couldn't. Until they were gone.

He looked around him, half expecting to see the others, Garrus, Anderson, Hackett. But it was just him. Just little old him.

He looked down into his hand, the one that he hadn't opened since he had been at the airlock. The one that was supposed to be empty. The one he had been holding onto so tight that red marks were left in his wake when he opened it up.

See, he didn't want to let go of the extra set of dog tags they had found in Shepard's lockers. The ones with the scrapes across her name from who knew what battle, the ones that made them unusable. He hadn't wanted to shoot her out of that airlock, watch her drift away from him again, the last remaining remnant of the woman who had been a kind of savior to them all.

So he had only given them one of her dog tags, and the other had been his.

And in his hand was the matching set.

—

He stood at the window, leaning heavily on his crutches, his green eyes focused on the middle distance instead of out into space. He glanced over when the blue-armored turian stepped up next to him and crossed his arms in front of his carapace, his weight cocked onto one leg.

"You gonna blame me for this, too?" asked the pilot, with a gesture at the window.

"No," replied Garrus in his usual careful, slow flange. "Shepard could have left you to die, but she didn't. She was stubborn that way. Never leave a man behind." He shrugged. "Wouldn't be fair to give you credit for that."

Joker turned his searching gaze from the turian out into the big black expanse of space. "Yeah," he said, shortly, tightly. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

And the two watched her dog tags drift out into space, in silence with their thoughts.


	2. Learning to Live Again

He shifted in his seat a little uncomfortably, glancing around the little cafe as if to see whether anyone else noticed how strange he felt. As no one was turned his way he put to rest the idea that there was a blinking neon holosign above his head reading, "Trying Too Hard" in giant purple letters.

"Hey!"

His gaze jumped up at the sunny greeting and so did he, making his chair scrape across the floor loudly.

"Uh – hi!" he replied, trying to match her tone for enthusiasm, though he thought he might have only sounded nervous. She smiled broadly, one of those big-toothed, wide smiles he used to admire in magazines, before something subtler had replaced it as his favorite. He swallowed in spite of himself at the expression, but was even more surprised when she leaned forward to place a kiss on his cheek.

"Ah, thanks – thanks for coming, I mean."

If she sensed his nervousness, she gave no sign. Instead, she waved away his gratitude as she settled herself into the seat across from his. "Thanks for inviting me," she said. He slid into the seat he had abandoned when she came in, flattening his hands on the table briefly as though to cool the anxious heat in his palms.

She turned a holo sign on the table her way, to check the day's specials. "What looks good?" she asked as she watched the scrolling teas.

"I… don't know," he admitted, with a breathy laugh through his nose. "I guess I was trying too hard not to look nervous." He supposed he might as well get the elephant in the room exposed. Maybe then he wouldn't feel quite so exposed himself.

She looked up from her reading to give him another one of those flashy smiles, the whites of her teeth bright against her dark skin. "You're doing fine," she reassured him. He nodded, but secretly wished she wouldn't be so flawless. It only threw him into sharper contrast.

"So I was surprised to get your message," she admitted as she leaned her elbows onto the table, one delicate hand with long fingers crooked into her elbow while the other curled around her elegant jawline. She didn't have a trigger callous anywhere. "I thought you were one of those 'married to your job' types."

"Well," he said, feeling a flush of embarrassment in his cheeks. He _was_ one of those types, wasn't he? Was that a bad thing? "Even married people can have fun," was all he could think to say, but at the raise of her eyebrows he realized what he had been implying. "Wait – that… sounded bad."

She laughed, a genuinely amused, unapologetic laugh, and relief washed over him. There, that was familiar. "I'm a doctor, Commander," she reassured him with a nod. "I think I know what you mean."

"Right – at Huerta, right?" He hoped the relief he felt at remembering that detail didn't show on his features. She nodded, and began an explanation of what she did and what she had been doing earlier that day when he had invited her out, but his full attention drifted more to the way she spoke and the way she sat. She had her shoulders pushed slightly forward to minimize their breadth, which made her collarbones prominent, a girlish posture, something that made her feel alluring, maybe. Her lips were coated in red and her eyelashes perfectly separated, dark against her cheeks when she looked down at her drink.

She had gone to so much effort; he felt badly that all he had done was shave and comb his hair. He berated himself for the pang of disappointment. It was an unfair comparison, and he knew it, but – maybe because of the scent of coffee in the air – he found his thoughts drifting, to BDU trousers and N7 hoodies, freckles, dark circles, and sleepy expressions.

"So, enough about me. Tell me about your work."

He took a breath, his lips parting but nothing coming out. He couldn't. That was part of the deal, and as he awkwardly explained as much he missed the time when he hadn't had to explain such things – a time when a moment of hesitation from him would have spurred a slinky come on, a husky tone, and lowered lids. "You sure you wanna keep that secret from me, Lieutenant?" He cracked a half-grin without meaning to, an unfinished laugh falling from his lips.

Shit, now she was going to think he was laughing at her.

He just barely got through an explanation, and he didn't know how, but she didn't seem to hate him. She asked questions, prompted him to continue, seemed interested in his life – all the things he hadn't been able to do. When they stood up from the table he reached habitually for his omnitool, pulling the check toward him.

"Let me get this one," she insisted, and then she coyly titled her head, her dark gaze looking up at him pointedly. "Then maybe you can get the next one."

The invitation was implicit in her expression and he felt relieved again, glad, that he hadn't screwed this up too badly. There was another stab of guilt, though, as he looked down into her open expression, her warm and kind and inviting expression, and missed a sly twinkle that suggested something more, a great secret he desperately wanted to be a part of. The doctor was a beautiful woman, and he got the impression after just one coffee that she was the sort of woman any man would be lucky to live his life with.

It was just the whole 'living' thing that he was having a hard time grasping in the first place.


End file.
